


If you give it a name it has already won

by chiapslock



Series: Sheithunlimited [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternative Universe - Inception, Angst, But honestly they have so many bigger problems in this, Inception!AU, Keith is 17 the first time they have sex, M/M, Mention of torture, Rough Sex, fucked up people with fucked up pasts that fell in love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-28
Updated: 2017-01-28
Packaged: 2018-09-20 08:47:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9483542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chiapslock/pseuds/chiapslock
Summary: Keith's head has always been kind of fucked up, he doesn't need a machine that lets him enter other people dreams to know that.The PASIV brings a lot of problem in Keith's life, but it also brings him Shiro. So it's probably worth it.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This was written (hastly) for the first day of #sheithunlimited week for the prompt DREAMERS.  
> I wanted to write something a little less... fucked up, but alas.  
> It's pretty late where I am from so I haven't... re-read this as much as I probably should? But I wanted to post something today for the start of the week so here it is

Keith doesn’t even remember the first time he enters someone else’s dream, he was young – too young – and angry. He knows now that he’s lucky to be alive, that everything he was then was a recipe for disaster in this job.

In the beginning he took any job, jumping from team to team, trying to stay alive, trying to find a reason to stay alive (which might be worse), at least until the freaking Mombasa job.

Their architect betrays them in the middle of their con and Keith, that can’t even remember the guy’s name, gets strangled by the mark’s subconscious.

He wakes up, because of course he does, and he can’t _breathe_ , for a second he thinks that he’s still feeling the effect of the dream, but then he realizes that no, there’s someone fucking choking him. Fan-fucking-tasting.

Keith tries to kick at the guy’s stomach, but he can’t reach, and he can’t pry the hands from his throat. He’s going to die, here, for a stupid mistake, because _someone_ should have checked better, dammit. For a second, for the first time in his life, he thinks that he doesn’t want to die, not really.

He’s sixteen, he had lied to get the job, and isn’t this just the high point of his miserable life?

The next thing he sees is red and for a second he doesn’t understand (shouldn’t he be seeing black? He isn’t an expert of asphyxiation but…) before he realizes that what he’s seeing is blood, more to the point the blood of the guy trying to kill him, that is now sliding to the floor, dead.

He looks up and he sees who saves him and for a second he doesn’t even recognize their freaking Extractor, which really speaks volumes about how much had Keith been paying attention. The guy holds a gun in his hand (the gun he had just used to save Keith’s life, presumably) and he doesn’t even spare a glance his way before firing again, killing the damn snitch.

When Keith stops coughing and can finally focus on what’s going on around them it’s chilling to realize that they are the only two left alive.

“Well,” the extractor says, cleaning his face with his sleeve (his bloody face, with other’s people blood) “this went poorly”

Keith, probably because he almost died, loses his shit. _Rather poorly?_ This was a clusterfuck of epic proportions and the worst thing is? It’s the first time in his life that he has felt alive.

The other guy looks at him and then smiles, amused.

\--

This is how Keith meets Shiro, but when other people ask they just tell them that they had worked together on some jobs before deciding they made a good team.

And they do. Shiro teaches him how to dream, how to _really dream_ , and the difference from whatever amateur bullshit he was doing and _this_ is incredible.

Keith starts to realize the incredible possibilities that the PASIV offers them, start to realize the power at his fingertips and that he can do more than just little jobs to pass the time and buy some bread at the end of the day.

They aren’t a complete team, obviously, and what the two of them can do alone is very limited, but Shiro doesn’t like working with people he doesn’t trust and after last time Keith can’t say he’s a fan of what happens when they don’t do their researches.

(“Why where you even in the Mombasa Job?” he asks Shiro three months after their little partnership starts.

“Because there was a spy” he says, like it’s logical, but Keith doesn’t get it.

Keith doesn’t know about the Galra yet, about the story behind his prosthetic arm, about his scars, his nightmares. He was just a kid then, even if he liked to think he wasn’t.)

It’s just the two of them most of the time, sometimes they are joined by a kid, even younger than him, but Pidge never dreams, she’s their chemist, one of the best even at her age, and she just watches them, with a gun at her side.

Keith sometimes wonder if, in this job, there is someone out there who isn’t as screwed up as he is and is. He hopes not.

\--

Considering their first meeting, Shiro should have been way less shocked when, five months after the Mombasa job, Keith pushes him against a door with the perfectly understandable intention of fucking the guy’s brain’s out. And getting fucked right after, because, really, Keith has been thinking about this since the first moment he had seen Shiro cleaning blood from his face.

It’s cute that Shiro tries to stop him, asks him if he’s sure, tells him that Keith doesn’t _have to_ , Keith laughs in his fucking perfect face.

He _has to_. Because there has never been anyone who had actually given two crap about Keith the way Shiro does, not since his father, not since he was left alone when he was twelve and so fucking hungry. Most importantly he _wants to_ and Keith had never wanted anything in so long that the feeling left him breathless and confused most of the time.

He cups Shiro’s face, licks the scar across his nose and hopes that this is the last time they have to _talk_ about this (“You didn’t even _say_ anything, Keith, you just lick me whenever I try to _talk_!”).

Thankfully Shiro gets on with the program rather quickly from there on, and Keith smirks when the other picks him up (and yes, Keith can feel his hand all up on his ass, he likes it very much) and brings him to the bed.

They’re staying in a shitty safe house and they have to stay out of the radar for a while, this time, which is why it’s the perfect opportunity for this, when they have days where they won’t be disturbed.

So they take their time. Not the first time, of course, the first time is quick and messy, because Keith can’t wait any longer and Shiro doesn’t seem to be much better (which is a relief, really, because he was sure Shiro wouldn’t have refused him for sex, but Keith didn’t want to ruin everything else).

The first time Shiro takes him with, probably, not enough preparation and it’s exactly what Keith wanted. The second time it’s Keith that pushes inside Shiro, looking at his chest, pumping his erection at the same time with each push.

He wonders what love feels like, if it’s something like what he feels when he watches Shiro moaning his name. If it’s not, if what he’s feeling it’s something else, he thinks that everyone else is just missing out.

\--

It’s almost one year later that Shiro hooks him up on the PASIV when they don’t have any job and tells him he has something to show him.

Keith follows him, of course he does, he would follow Shiro to his death and back and not even complain, and he doesn’t say anything at least until Shiro starts stripping in the middle of the dream.

They aren’t in the middle of the street, Shiro had made them appear in a room that Keith had never seen, but seemed kind of cozy (maybe his childhood room?), but, at the same time, Keith isn’t sure if he likes the idea of dream sex, he will try it if Shiro wants to but…

It takes him a moment to understand what he’s seeing.

Shiro has always been very particular about clothes, always wearing at least two shirts and one sweater and Keith had never said anything, even if it meant more time lost undressing him when they wanted to have sex. Keith had never asked and never known what Shiro had gave him so freely all those months ago.

He sees him now, his chest covered in cuts and scars that hadn’t been there in reality, bruises and injuries where in the real word Keith had licked at perfect skin. It’s a horrific painting and Keith doesn’t dare moving.

Every self-respectable dreamer knows about totems, about those little private things that changed between reality and dreams, sometimes the only thing that marked the line between madness and sanity. Keith had never heard of someone that used himself as a totem, his skin as a way to center himself, his trauma as a way to remind himself that he had survived, that the scars he felt weren’t real.

How can he not love this man, he wonders.

“You don’t have to show me yours,” Shiro tells him immediately “I just…” he stops, collects his thoughts. Keith doesn’t want to listen, it’s too much.

So he stops him, takes his dagger and shows it to Shiro, removing the bandage that show the little purple symbol that, in real life, just doesn’t exist.

Shiro already owns his life, what does it matter if he gives him his sanity as well?

\--

When she finds them Keith is suspicious, when she talks about assembling a team he’s pissed.

He thinks they have worked with some of them (Lance, probably, maybe?) but he doesn’t care, it’s dangerous, far more dangerous than any other job they have taken in the past two years together. If he says something now, he knows, Shiro would stop would listen to him.

But Keith looks at Allura, listen to her talk about Zarkon, about Galra, and thinks about Shiro’s chest. He keeps his mouth shut.

Vows to protect Shiro, or at least die trying.

\--

In the end Allura brings with her Lance, a forger, and Hunk, an architect, while him and Shiro call Pidge to help.

They shouldn’t work. Keith doesn’t like Lance, and the feeling is mutual, and they fumble, don’t work well together and this is not some kind of job they can just half-ass. This is Shiro’s life, and Keith won’t accept nothing but the best.

So one day he tells Shiro that he needs some time and he takes Lance and dive in his own subconscious. When he opens his eyes they are in Mombasa, and isn’t that just a bitch (his mind really doesn’t trust Lance, but the other doesn’t get the reference).

They talk, for hours, minutes in the real word, and they try to understand each other, try to work something out because they are the only part of this that doesn’t click as effortlessly as everything else. It’s difficult but after that Keith thinks that maybe now they can stay in the same room without biting each other faces off.

He’s almost proud of himself.

\--

They do some trial jobs, to start really working as a team, to iron out the kinks in their relationship and it’s difficult. Keith usually counts only on Shiro as back up, and now he has to keep count of at least two other heads if something goes wrong. Lance is unpredictable, he changes faces with too much ease and never tells them. Hunk is good but he doesn’t believe in himself enough. He sees all of this, but he doesn’t know what to do, how to make it better.

“Patience yealds focus” Shiro tells him, after their first job (which isn’t a disaster, but only because of dumb luck) and then he goes and do what he does best, he takes these kids with problems that Keith will never really know and makes them _better_ , like he had done with him almost four years ago.

In the end they are a well-oiled machine, they can almost predict each other’s movement, red each other’s mind. They are a team, they can trust each other, and in their world it’s much more than some get in their entire life.

\--

The night before the job he finds Shiro in their room and he doesn’t know what to do, doesn’t know what to say.

When Shiro looks at him and smiles, Keith doesn’t know what to expext.

“Don’t tell me this is actually the time where you want to _talk_ ” he says, smirking, like the little shit that he is. Keith loves him more than he can say and so he goes there and he licks the scar on his nose, because it’s the only thing he can do, the only way he knows how to tell him that it’s going to be okay.

\--

(After the job, after it’s done and the idea had been implanted in Zarkon’s mind, Shiro doesn’t wake up, lost in Limbo. Someone had to do it, everyone knows it, so Keith had let him, had woken up and had known that the minute it would take him to get on the PASIV again would be too much time that Shiro will live without him trapped in his own mind.

He doesn’t care. He closes his eyes again and goes after him.)

**Author's Note:**

> .....I'M SORRY???????
> 
> It's possible I will write something more to this universe. I would like to write the whole Zarkon job more in details, and explain Shiro's backstory a lot more, but with I really didn't have the time to make this a 10K monstruosity.
> 
> Just some notes that I couldn't put in the story: Shiro is an extractor, Keith works as his point man, but Shiro is training him to be an extractor in case something happens to him (he just doesn't tell him so, because the last time he tried Keith punched him in the face). The other's role are clearer, I hope (Allura is just the Tourist - at least in this job).  
> Shiro is ex-military, Galra is a special - and secret - branch in the military that uses the PASIV technology to do experiments on people and steal from other governments (make 2+2).


End file.
